Sydney is way too lucky when it comes to public funding for football stadiums

But, for Sydney, capacity increases and upgrades need to be sensible and in line with growing public demand, as is the case in England where many English football clubs have built new grounds or upgraded facilities in recent decades.

Beyond major new stadiums and upgrades for the Premier League giants in London, Manchester and Liverpool for stadiums, which now have capacities of 50,000 or higher and were mostly full in the 2018-19 season prior to the COVID disaster, even smaller English clubs will take heed of public demand before considering new stadiums.

For example, Leicester City's new stadium from 2002 (32,200) was only constructed after their promotion to the Premier League in 1994-95 after their previous ground (Filbert Street since 1891) was regularly sold out (21,500 capacity) during the late 1990s.

Sunderland, with a new stadium from 1997 (current capacity 49,000), still achieved a crowd average of 31,000 during the 2021-22 season playing in England's third tier.

But the Sydney push for more public funding continues despite Sydney already having considerable depth of reasonable stadiums, which can easily cater for their crowds.

The Olympic Stadium (83,000) has only achieved an average NRL home-and-away crowd of above 20,000 three times since 2005 (2012 to 2014).

The historical SCG (48,000) easily caters for the AFL's Sydney Swans, which had an average crowd of 31,000 in 2019.

The second Sydney AFL club Greater Western Sydney has the modern Showgrounds Stadium (24,000), but had averaged less than 6000 for their three home matches in 2022 after averaging 12,400 in 2019.

Given that the Sydney Roosters averaged just 15,800 in 2018 at the previous Sydney Football Stadium with its 45,000 capacity, good luck to anyone thinking that the new version (42,000) from 2023 will achieve a much higher average home crowd.

Penrith, on track for a record home crowd average in 2022 with 19,800 so far, are also hoping that a new $300 million stadium (25,000-30,000) will also boost crowds, albeit that team has only averaged over 15,000 for home games just three times since their inception in 1967 (2003-2005).

Sydney is indeed lucky with its stadiums – perhaps the luckiest of all Australian, British and American cities.

As it stands, the new stadiums for the Parramatta Eels and Sydney Roosters have provided great facilities for other football teams that mostly get much smaller crows such as the rugby union NSW Waratahs and football teams Western Sydney and Sydney FC.